Earth-working machines, for example, excavators, continuous miners, and loaders, often include ground engaging work tools that engage with and/or move a variety of earthen materials. Furthermore, tracked undercarriages that facilitate movement of the machines over ground surfaces and other moving parts of these machines may engage with the ground surface or earthen materials. Repeated exposure to hard work materials or the ground surface may cause one or more components of these machines to wear.
Conventional techniques for detecting wear on the machine components include manual measurements of component dimensions, which may be compared against specified dimensions of the components. Such manual measurements are not only time consuming but also can be inaccurate. Inaccurate measurements of the component dimensions in turn may result in incorrect predictions regarding the remaining life of the component. As a result, the component may either fail too early or may not be worn enough to require replacement or repair when the machine is removed from service for maintenance. Thus, there is a need for accurate measurement of component dimensions on a machine in its work environment to allow for improved component life predictions, which may help reduce the down time associated with repair or replacement of worn out components.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,327,857 B2 to Lloyd Jr. et al. (“the '857 patent”) that issued on Feb. 5, 2008 discloses a non-contact measurement method and apparatus for examining an object having complex surfaces or shape deformations. The '857 patent discloses an imaging device, such as, a full-field, non-contact, laser range sensor mounted on a translation stage that provides data in three spatial dimensions (X, Y, Z) of an object. The '857 patent refers to this three-dimensional data as a scanned image. The '857 patent further discloses that a three-dimensional reference model or reference image of the object is stored in a memory. The '857 patent discloses that the reference model is registered with the three-dimensional scanned image of the object. In addition, the '857 patent discloses a gauging module that determines one or more gauging measurements as the spacing between contours of the scanned image and the reference model.
Although the '857 patent discloses the use of imaging for measurement of deformations on a component, the disclosed device and methods may still not be optimal. In particular, the disclosed device requires the use of a specialized device mounted on a translation stage and configured to generate three-dimensional spatial measurements of the component. The use of a specialized imaging device and stage may make the disclosed apparatus cumbersome to use and expensive to maintain. Moreover, the disclosed apparatus requires the component to be taken out of service for performing the measurements. Such down time may not be practical or desirable to ensure maximum utilization of the component.
The wear measurement system of the present disclosure solves one or more of the problems set forth above and/or other problems in the art.